Israel said Monday it would once again target Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold mostly spared heavy attacks since April, as it stages its deepest incursion into Lebanon in two decades. The UN Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting later Monday on Israel expanding its operations in Lebanon, and the European Union called on Israel to "stop its military escalation". Iran, in stalled negotiations on an end to its wider war with the United States, said a Lebanon ceasefire remains a key condition for any deal. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said they had ordered strikes on Beirut's usually densely populated southern suburbs, AFP reported. "In light of the repeated violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon by the terrorist organization Hezbollah and the attacks on our cities and citizens", Netanyahu and Katz "instructed the army to strike terror targets in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut", a joint statement said. Katz said separately there would be "no calm in Beirut" if Hezbollah attacks continued, vowing to establish a military-controlled zone in the area of south Lebanon's Litani River. The Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Colonel Avichay Adraee, posting on X, urged Dahiyeh residents to evacuate "to preserve their safety". AFP journalists saw hundreds of families fleeing the southern suburbs, some on foot or on motorbikes, others in cars packed with belongings. Hours later, a correspondent said shops were closed and the area's streets were largely deserted. Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader. A truce to halt the fighting in Lebanon began on April 17, but has never been observed. Both Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire, justifying their attacks by the other's alleged breaches. - 'Vicious aggression' - South Beirut resident Hadi, 24, said he had hoped for some stability during the truce. "That feeling did not last long... Our fears intensified this morning after I received a series of messages about orders to bomb the southern suburbs, which caused widespread panic, and we immediately left the area," he told AFP by phone. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told a weekly press briefing that "a ceasefire in Lebanon is an essential condition for any deal aimed at ending the war" with the US. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said his country was facing "a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression", with the two nations set to hold a fourth round of US-hosted talks on Tuesday and Wednesday. He called the talks "the only solution to stop the war with the least possible damage". Beirut's southern suburbs and their surroundings have been struck twice since April 8, when huge Israeli attacks across Lebanon killed hundreds in minutes. Israel's military on Monday also issued evacuation warnings for more than a dozen south Lebanon locations. A day earlier, Israeli troops seized Beaufort castle, which commands sweeping views of south Lebanon, as the military expands its ground operations. Israeli forces used the castle as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.
